Hi, everyone.
Aaron here for Zolotech and the iPhone 12 has been my main phone since my iPhone
12 pro review. I switched over to it full time.
I'm recording out of the forward facing camera from it in 4k 30.
And I think it looks pretty good.
And the forward facing camera and rear camera are great.
We'll talk more about those in a little bit,
but let's first talk about what it's like to use now. Like I said,
I switched over to this device full time and I switched from the 12 pro.
And the first thing I noticed is how much lighter it is.
The iPhone 12 pro is made of stainless steel and glass where the iPhone 12 is
aluminum and glass.
There is definitely a weight difference between the two of them.
I appreciate the matte finish on the outside band of the iPhone 12,
although I would've liked to have the matte finish on the back as well,
because this is a fingerprint magnet because of that, I've been using a case,
although I don't normally use cases a lot,
but I've been using this clear case and maybe I'll do a separate review on this.
There's not a ton to talk about, but I do like it and it's holding up well,
and this phone just feels great in the hands.
I really missed the iPhone 5 and 5S and iPhone 4 design.
So this is sort of a combination of both because you have glass front and back,
but you also have an aluminum frame or on the outside edge,
which kind of is a combination of both of those phones. It feels great.
In your hand, it's harder to drop, I think, than the previous version,
the iPhone 11 with the curved edges.
And I was never personally a fan of those curved edges.
I just liked the squared off design personally better.
And I've been waiting for it ever since that of course is very subjective and
you may or may not like that,
but you'll see the back is completely covered in fingerprints already.
And it's just from me recording the beginning of this video. However, this year,
this display is covered in ceramic shield.
So it's four times less likely to crack when you drop it. However,
I already got a scratch on this phone and I don't know how,
and I mentioned that in my 12 pro review, but if I turn off the display,
you can see here right by my fingernail.
You can see that there's actually a scratch. So there's a scratch right there.
Not sure where it came from.
You can actually feel it if you run your fingernail over it.
And so the phone is less prone to actually cracking,
but has the same sort of scratch resistance. It is glass.
So unless they switched to something like Sapphire,
you're not going to gain any scratch resistance, really,
but it does seem to be holding up fairly well. Although I would still say,
put a screen protector on it.
It had less scratches at this point than my iPhone 11 did.
Now the display of the iPhone 12 is really nice. It's got great viewing angles.
It goes up to 625 nits of brightness.
That's one of the disadvantages compared to the iPhone 12 pro,
where that goes up to 800. However, most people won't notice this outside.
It's as bright as an iPhone 11, for example. So if you've used an iPhone 11,
you'll have the same sort of brightness level outside. Now,
the display looks great, has very deep blacks.
As you can see in the upper right here,
those pixels are turned off and it's very vibrant and looks great.
And it is controlled using PWM.
The brightness is controlled flickering the display to do that. It's how mostly,
almost all OLEDs are controlled. And so the screen is always flickering,
even though you can't see it with your eyes, as you increase the brightness,
it's flickering as you bring it down. It's not,
and this causes eye strain for a lot of people.
One in 10 are actually affected and I'm typically affected,
but this phone I've had zero eyestrain with there's something different from the
11 pro and even the ones before that,
the iPhone 10 and 10 S I really couldn't use because they really hurt my eyes.
They fixed a lot of it with the iPhone 11 and 11 pro max,
or the 11 pro and the 11 pro max. But the iPhone 12 I've had zero issues.
So this display is,
must be at a very high PWM rate so that it won't bother your eyes.
I know it's something that still bothers some, but for the most part I've had,
I've had zero issues with this display. I'm really happy with it that way.
Now speed. Overall, this has the,
A14 bionic CPU in it with 4 gigs of Ram. And I know some people say,
why doesn't it have six, like the pro. And honestly,
I haven't found that you needed it. In fact,
the video that I made with the iPhone 12 pro I recorded it with the 12 pro and
HDR edited it on the new iPad air, which also has four gigs of Ram,
fully edited, two layers of video with 4k HDR.
And most of the time it was super smooth until I played back the entire
video. So that's on a bigger screen this screen.
I don't think you're going to have an issue with any of that.
Everything is nice and smooth. I've had pretty much zero slow downs.
I haven't really noticed any issues here.
Everything's super fast and smooth transitions are great going into settings.
I haven't had any lock ups, freezes or anything like that.
So I don't think four gigs of Ram is that big of a deal. Now,
maybe because there's only four gigs of Ram compared to the six of the pro.
Maybe that's why we only get 30 frames per second of HDR video.
So if we go into record video,
you can see HDR only allows 30 frames per second under this notice
here. So maybe that's why you need that extra two gigs of Ram as a buffer.
I'm not sure, however, it seems plenty fast just in general.
And most of the time you wouldn't use 60 frames per second,
unless you're recording it for slow motion.
So it's not mostly really an issue for anybody unless you really wanted that
faster frame rate for maybe screen recording or video recording or something
where you wanted to show the speed of a display. Otherwise, it's great.
Now with the iPhone 12 series, we have Qualcomm modems with 5g.
Now the Qualcomm modem alone leads for better connectivity.
I haven't found an area where I have no service. You'll see,
I have two bars now and I generally get great speeds. So if I go to speed test,
for example, we'll go into speed test. Let me turn off wifi and I'll hit go.
We'll wait for it just a moment. And you'll see the speeds are quite good.
So they're better than 4g, usually double in the area I live.
That's going to vary where you live, but you'll see now. Well, there we go.
It's bouncing up to over 80 megabits per second,
with two bars inside a brick building. So that's pretty good.
It's using T-Mobile six for 5g. I don't have millimeter wave.
And most of the world doesn't get millimeter wave.
The millimeter wave antenna on the side is really used for Verizon in some areas
with, at and T. And hopefully we see it in more areas,
but it's more line of sight. And I don't think that's a big deal for most.
I think sub six is where it's more important. So you'll see,
I'm getting 78 down by 15.6 up. If I was outside,
I've had 140 megabits per second down with only two bars of service.
So I find this to be really good. I was getting half of that with 4g.
So for me, it's an advantage. It's not for everybody.
It just depends where you live. Of course. Now,
one thing to know is if you're using 5g and you're using dual SIM,
so you're using a SIM card with the SIM,
you can't use them simultaneously and use 5g. You have to deactivate one,
then use 5g, then reactivate both. For some reason,
you can't do that on the iPhone 12 or 12 pro.
So it's just something to point out.
It doesn't personally affect me as I don't have dual Sims enabled,
but for those of you that do you want to keep that in mind is that may be a
problem for you, but you'll still get 4g speeds.
And that's leads me into battery life because the phone switches between
5g and 4g 5g typically uses more power than 4g.
And the phone will intelligently understand when 5g is an advantage and then
turn it off.
People that have tested this have not found much of a difference using 4g versus
5g, but I wanted to share with you the battery life on this phone.
So if we go to my battery settings here, of course,
battery health on this phone will be a hundred percent because it's brand new.
But if we go over the last six days,
you'll see here's when I switched over to the iPhone 12 and here is,
Oh, here's yesterday three hours and 24 minutes of screen on time,
four hours and 19 minutes of screen off time.
And I used about 65% of the battery.
Now I'm finding with regular use six to six and a half hours of screen on time
with this phone, depending on what you're doing. You'll see today.
I'm almost at three hours of screen on time and I haven't used 50% of the
battery and I haven't charged it at all either.
So most people I'm seeing as well as myself is six to six and a half hours.
I'm getting about a half hour more battery life out of the iPhone 12 than I am
with the iPhone 12 pro.
And I think that as Jonathan Morrison said is due to the screen brightness being
600 nits instead of 800 nits with the 12 pro. If you're outside a lot,
of course,
the screen is going to be at a higher brightness and it's going to use more
power. So I think it really depends on your screen brightness.
That may be a big factor as well as that extra Ram that could use a little bit
more power. I don't think it's a ton,
but maybe it uses enough power to make that half hour difference.
This may be patched in future updates. I don't know,
but right now that's what I'm seeing now, as far as the cameras,
while you already saw the video out of the forward facing camera at the
beginning of the video, but all cameras are great.
Just like the iPhone 12 pro counterpart.
They're great with the exception of not having LIDAR,
which helps with autofocus and portrait mode. You can do portrait mode at night.
Them,
you can also do night shot or night mode using the wide and ultra wide lenses.
And they're really great. They're great at photos and video.
So take a look at some of the photos I was able to take with this.
And some of them.
[Inaudible].
No, the speakers of the phone are pretty good.
I've noticed that they sound more in stereo than last year. The more I use them.
So if we go over to my iPhone, 12 pro boxing,
you'll see, this is the video. Let me jump ahead here a little bit.
And let me turn the video up.
This is the 512 gigabyte Pacific blue, iPhone 12.
So what I've found is the speakers are nice and loud.
I have no issue hearing them. They're plenty loud for most people. However,
at the highest volumes, some people have said they sound a little tinny.
I would say that they're clear,
but they lack sort of depth that maybe the iPhone 11 had.
At least that's what I found in my comparison. So when I'm using this,
I find that they sound great.
They go a couple of decibels louder than last year, but they're not as I guess,
Basey or as rich as last year,
speakers at the higher volume at lower volumes.
I don't think you can tell the difference for the most part,
unless you're an audio engineer and you listened to these things regularly. Now,
as far as fast charging,
while you can charge this up to 50% from zero using the 20 watt fast
charger from Apple, but there's mag safe this year and mag safe.
Well as sort of controversial, depending who you ask, it's valuable.
Other people don't think it is.
It uses magnets to attach to the back and it uses cheap wireless charging.
You'll see it holds on nicely to the phone.
And that's something that some people like and others don't.
If you pull it out off from the phone, of course it stops charging,
but some people don't like that. You have to actually detach it. They said,
why not just plug in a cable? I'm kind of indifferent to this. I like both.
I like that I can use the phone while charging and it's wireless.
And then it frees up a port. Maybe I need to connect something to it,
import some camera footage or do something else. You can do that.
So I kind of like it for that. And I think this really is for the future.
Some future accessories,
I would love to see what they're going to do in the future. Of course,
some people say the magnets aren't strong enough.
I suppose they could make stronger magnets in whatever attaches to it.
And then using the case with it. I like it as well, because you have, again,
the same sort of attachments. It recognizes the case.
And I think this is leading to a wireless future right now you have a
magnetometer and NFC, the phone will actually recognize,
watch what's attached to it. So when you connect a case,
it knows that that's a clear case attaching to it.
So if you turn the screen off, let me take the case off.
Let me show you what this looks like. And we'll go back home,
put the case on,
and you'll see it recognizes that it's a case attached. If you put a blue case,
it kind of shows up blue. If you put a red case, it shows up red.
So it knows what's attached to the device.
So that's something I think is really nice.
And I think it's leading to a wireless future.
If Apple can get this to communicate properly and at high speed,
I don't think it's a problem.
So for some people having issues without something like a lightning port to
actually connect and diagnose it, this could present a problem.
If there was a problem with the wireless antenna, of course,
that could be the same with the lightning port as well.
So I think it is leading to a wireless future. Now, in conclusion,
if you're going to pick up an iPhone 12 and you're going to update to say 128
gig model, you're only $150 off from the 12 pro.
So you really need to weigh the difference between having the LIDAR sensor and
telephoto lens versus what you have with the 12,
you will get a slight battery hit with the iPhone 12 pro.
So you may want the iPhone 12 for that reason. But in general,
I would pick up the iPhone 12 pro over this one for that additional hundred and
$50. I really like the size of this phone.
It feels very comfortable in my hands coming from an 11 pro max down to this
size. I had no issues.
So I can highly recommend this to anyone looking for a great phone.
I wouldn't feel bad, but if you're coming from an iPhone 11 to this,
I don't know that it's necessary unless you have to have this design and the
updated cameras. Then I would say go to a 12 pro if you really want something,
that's a little bit of a jump.
They are a big jump over last year's phones in many different ways.
But for some,
those jumps may not be significant enough to warrant the price difference and
trading it in. But let me know what you're deciding to do in the comments below.
And of course I have comparisons of this with the 11 as well as the 12 pro as
well. So check out those videos. If you haven't already,
if you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper,
of course I'll link it in the description like I normally do.
And if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe.
And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like, as always.
Thanks for watching. This is Aaron. I'll see you next.